Homelessness is one of the most vexing public policy problems we face. If you live in a big city, especially on the West Coast, you literally face it every day. And every day, it seems to get worse. Why? And what can we do about it? Christopher Rufo, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has answers.
Reader Interactions
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Twenty five years ago, a friend of mine researched and wrote an article about kids living in the streets of Manhattan. Now this was twenty five years ago — Giuliani had done a fantastic job of cleaning up Manhattan. I walked through Thompkins Square Park at 1:00 am and only saw a couple of yours walking designer dogs. It was nice. Ten years earlier, the only reason one would’ve been there any time of the day was to score heroin. Anyhow, this is just to point out that “homelessness” in Manhattan during the Guilian years was not the same issue/problem it now is there under deBlasio, or in SF, LA, or Seattle…
So…
My friend learned that many, many, MANY of the young people living on the streets of Manhattan in the mid-nineties were NOT homeless but just hanging out on a lark. They were mostly college kids taking time off. Lied to their parents about what they were doing. When they ran out of money or it got too tough, they went back to where they came from. Mostly they hung out, smoked some pot, lightly pan-handled. And went home for the winter.
We have as a community and culture romanticized the homeless notably in B westerns, in which the heroes are often, not always, wandering cowboys living outside society wh stumble upon wrongdoing, right those wrongs, and move on, occasionally without even a horse. Add the films and stories of Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and more recently Bonnie and Clyde and not to be ignored, the moronic and evil Easy Rider. Not a nickel to go across the street with for these filthy spreaders of trouble, grief, and disease. These are the enemy of all. Add The Squad, Bernie ‘the shnook’Sanders the weakness of Chuck Schumer and the power-mad Nancy Pelosi and we have the fall of our American Empire, very much reminiscent of that other great society in Rome many years ago.